Network service providers establish networks to provide subscribers with access to services, including broadband Internet access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video services, mobile phone service, and others. In a common deployment, hundreds or thousands of individual subscriber devices may connect to a network switch, e.g., a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), that aggregates network traffic from the subscriber devices onto a high-capacity uplink to a provider edge device of the service provider network. The provider edge device may service multiple such network switches located within the service provider's customer service area so as to service million of subscriber devices.
Service providers often measure network traffic exchanged between the service provider network and the subscriber devices, and may collect network traffic statistics for the different services used by each subscriber device. For example, a service provider may periodically collect network traffic statistics for individual subscribers on a per-service basis for a variety of purposes, including subscriber billing, traffic planning, and network load assessment. Because provider edge devices function as an access point for multiple network switches and are typically the first network hop from a subscriber device to a service node, each of the provider edge devices present may be tasked with the requirement of gathering statistics for the services provided to its subscriber devices. However, as the number of subscribers and the number of services offered to the subscribers escalates, service statistics collection requirements may present tremendous resource demands on the provider edge devices.